New Year's tragedy: Jersey City man, 22, dies when car plunges into water near Liberty State Park

The Pych family of Jersey City celebrated the new year at home last night, watching the countdown but saving the Champagne for early Wednesday, when they would all toast with 22-year-old Mark Pych, who was out celebrating with friends.

Mark never made it home.

Instead, early this morning, his distraught parents and sister waited in the parking lot of Surf City on Marin Boulevard after Jersey City told them at 6 a.m. that Mark was involved in a fatal motor vehicle accident.

Mark Pych was driving a burgundy Nissan Altima when it plunged into the Morris Canal at the end of Marin Boulevard, according to Jersey City police and fire spokesman Bob McHugh.

The Pych family – Wieslay and Maria Pych, and their 17-year-old daughter, Bernadette – said Mark was out for the night and that he planned to visit the Surf Club, a bar and restaurant located at the foot of Marin.

"He was going to meet his friends to celebrate the New Year's," Bernadette Pych told The Jersey Journal.

She recalled the last moments she spent with her older brother.

"We were just playing Fun Run on our phones last night," she said. "He loved to make jokes and he was peaceful."

According to McHugh, at about 3:30 a.m. Pych drove through orange barricades that acted as barriers at the end of Marin Boulevard. Earlier reports that multiple people were in the Nissan are inaccurate, McHugh said.

"A security guard had reported seeing multiple people in the car but that's not the case," said McHugh. "There was only one person in the vehicle."

Divers with the New York Police Department found the car and recovered Pych's body, he said.

McHugh said standard procedure is to wait for toxicology results, he said.

A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers crane arrived at the scene at about 10 a.m. to remove the vehicle from the water. Jersey City police divers attached cables to the car and then the crane lifted it out of the water, McHugh said. The whole process took about two hours.

Wieslay Pych said his son had just graduated from Rutgers Newark with a degree in business.